Mind Whip

A tax aura built on the recurring-upkeep template that defined a lot of Ice Age's slower black designs. The mechanic is a soft lock with a release valve: every turn the enchanted creature's controller either bleeds three mana into the void or eats two damage and watches the creature tap down, useless for the turn. Neither outcome is a kill, which is the point. This is attrition, not removal. The card asks the opponent to keep paying a tax that compounds against their development, and the clock (two damage per missed payment) eventually does the work that the aura itself never quite commits to. The friction that balances it cuts both ways: a determined opponent with mana to spare simply pays and keeps swinging, so Mind Whip is at its best when their resources are already stretched thin and three mana is a real cost rather than a rounding error. It is a slower cousin of the pay-or-suffer school that black has returned to in many forms since, where the threat of an effect, renewed each upkeep, is meant to warp how the opponent spends their turn rather than to resolve a board state outright.